The Right Trends for Spring 2011

The best trends this season are high on impact and low on effort. Read below for what you need to know when it comes to putting your postrecession wardrobe together and then check out all the spring 2011 fashion week coverage.

"This," remarked a colleague halfway through the Dior show in Paris this past fall, "does not look like recession." She was right. It didn't even look like postrecession, if postrecession is meant to be a period of subtle readjustment. What it looked like was Katy Perry--the deluxe version, with froth, color, jaunty sailor hats, waved hair, and Bettie Page--style bangs.

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The message wasn't exactly pointing to chastened sobriety at Louis Vuitton either, where animal motifs, inlaid shoes, neon, and sequins competed, sometimes in the same outfit, for eye space. "It's camp," says Marc Jacobs baldly. "It's inspired by Susan Sontag's essay 'Notes on "Camp,"' which even prompted the music." No one can accuse Jacobs of not opting for a thorough immersion in Sontag-ism. The first model on that black marble runway sported a Sontag-esque zebra stripe in her hair. Even more arresting--and a little unsettling maybe--was the close-up craftsmanship of the clothes, which incorporated lamé, crystals, satin, glass pearls, sequins, and chinoiserie. "We reembroidered everything," elaborates Jacobs. "Most of the clothes took forever to finish because they were made, taken apart, and sent to different embroiderers; then they went through another process before being resewn."

It was arresting because for all the painstaking work, this Vuitton collection is hardly aiming at classic chic. "I don't believe there's such a thing as good taste or bad taste," says Jacobs. "I'd rather be fun and decadent, camp and glamorous. Go out. Shine. Be loud."

If you're a disciple of the sober, the pared back, the understated, then alarm bells--and not of the minimalist variety--may now be wailing. Try to tune them out, because there's more of this to digest. At Prada, for instance, all there was was color, clashing stripes and baroque swirls, ruffles and Day-Glo fur, just-below-the-knee lengths and weirdly waved hair (because while Jacobs was channeling '70s New York, Miuccia Prada was going for what looked like '30s Buenos Aires). This is for women who have no interest in going anywhere unobtrusively--and it matters because where Prada leads, the rest of fashion often follows.

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The rest of fashion may be interested in knowing, therefore, that Prada's spring collection was originally conceived to have more-affordable-than-usual pieces, many of them in cotton. "But then," explains Prada, "we had to source special cotton from Japan because we needed it to drape in a specific way ... and it was very expensive." She sounds rueful but not entirely heartbroken. An expensive label with a reputation for innovation and quality can't jettison everything it stands for just because its customers' budgets have been streamlined. It just has to rethink what bait it's going to use.

I say "just," but this is not something a designer works out in five minutes. The pressure to find the ignition key to the great commercial engine of fashion is on, especially now that luxury houses can't rely on women buying a couple of new handbags every season to keep the motor turning over (although the death of the It bag may have been somewhat exaggerated; more on this later).

Sean Cunningham

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The Prada and Vuitton solution is exceptional clothes and quality that can't be replicated in cheaper lines. "You can get 'real clothes' on the high street, but that's not what I feel women need from designers right now," argues Jacobs. Plenty agree. From Christopher Kane's tour de force collection in London, which included perforated leather lace with a vinyl coating in colors so bright, they may well prove to be luminous, to Marni's sorbets, stacked like off-the-charts luscious desserts, and Diane von Furstenberg's adventures in op art, designers have reengaged with color and print. And not just accents but head-to-toe sweeps of sapphire or umber--or clashing blocks that ought to set your teeth on edge but actually make your mouth water. (Try khaki, forget-me-not blue, and bubblegum pink.) Then there were all those references to Robert Motherwell, Hans Hofmann, and Clyfford Still, as if designers had been given a sneak preview of the Museum of Modern Art's blockbuster abstract-expressionism show, as well as the op art of Bridget Riley.

"Fabulous--on the runway," I jotted in my notebook. Then I visited Tory Burch one gray New York afternoon in her Chelsea office, the one with the tangerine wall that almost matches the orange midcalf shirtwaist she was wearing. Orange and way, way below the knee--trends I wouldn't have automatically prescribed for a five-foot-four blonde with her finger firmly on the pulse of what real women want. "First off, longer lengths work for everyone," she tells me emphatically. "It's a question of shoes. A high, clumpy wedge is the most practical option right now." She's so taken with the blocky wooden wedge (it stomped down eight out of every ten runways), she's predicting it will be the way to make peace with wide trousers.

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You may want to heed her advice because wide pants are no longer a peccadillo of cool, edgy, leggy style leaders in London and Manhattan. They're one of the pant shapes for 2011. "And you don't have to be born leggy," avers Burch. "They make you leggy. Wear them long--and with wedges." As with the longer skirt, the longer, wider (but lean at the top) pant requires definition to create a sharp, crisp shape. A neat blouse, not too tight but definitely not baggy, one of spring's new skinny-rib knits, a cropped, curvy jacket, and a skinny belt--see where this is going? In a direct line back to those '70s billboards for Charlie (bad perfume, terrific ads). As for that shade Burch is wearing? It's straight out of her spring show, where it looked ultrafresh and chic teamed with navy, white, and camel. "It's a mood shifter and an instant updater," she says. Since she's effectively glowing, we probably have to take her word for it. "It's low effort too," she adds. "If you don't want to wear much jewelry or print, a jolt of color does all the work for you."

High impact, low effort sounds like a modus operandi we could all embrace. Orange isn't a universal panacea, but being braver with color--at any age--could be. A little neon trim in your 50s or 60s? Prada tried it when she paired some colossally high and vibrantly hued Miu Miu strappy stilettos with a sober black schoolteacher coat to present the Turner Prize at London's Tate Britain museum. What could be more stylish and somehow appropriate than that de?ant spark of color?

If it's all sounding a little hectic, don't despair. Minimalism hasn't retreated; rather, it's redefined itself and acquired some 21st-century attitudes. That means absorbing a degree of softness and lyricism, a point not lost on fashion wunderkind Alexander Wang, whose previously dark, moody Goth customer has cleaned out her closet and emerged with the same devotion to a pared-down urban uniform cut from white parachute silks and even the occasional bolt of peach or mint-green satin. I think we can safely say the rock chick is taking some time out while her more serene sister gets her turn. That's a good thing; the rock chick has been looking tired and emotional lately.

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More controversial, as far as purists are concerned, might be the ruffles and peplums that form part of minimalism's new pact with fashion. But it works; you have to only look at Raf Simons's triumphant collection for Jil Sander. Or Phoebe (queen of minimalism) Philo's Céline show. Floor-length ball skirts in lush emerald or lemon, purple jackets with orange pants, T-shirts with peplums, and salmon with fuchsia popped at Sander; Céline's graphic cobalt and leaf-green geometrics with minute flashes of crimson always underscored Philo's rigorous desire to keep things what she calls "simple, light, effortless, low-key." If ever there was an argument that minimalism doesn't have to be austere, that it can even be (whisper it) pretty, this was it.

For now, fashion isn't about trends per se, or even about the tensions between opposing schools of thought, but about coalitions based on those significant items that take you (and those favorites from past seasons) on a new journey. Chief among these is lace. Try a top, which might be more versatile than a dress, and consider alternatives to black, which can be harsh. Gray and white are subtle choices that look as good with a pair of navy silk capris (spring's other pant shape) as with denim.

Other investments? The waistcoat, which can be layered over T-shirts, shorts, pants, and skirts; the blouse; printed and bicolored fitted knitwear; the utterly plain tunic, worn as a dress or with pants or shorts as a youthful alternative to the suit; the unembellished, sensibly sized bag; and the jumpsuit. I don't suggest this last one lightly, but it was all over the runways. Not that that should necessarily sway us. And it didn't--until I ran into Philo wearing a strapless navy one, with a masculine tuxedo jacket hanging off her shoulders. She'd just picked up the British Fashion Council's Designer of the Year award--and in that jumpsuit, she was about the chicest woman in the room. "It also happens to be extremely comfortable," she pointed out. If you'd seen the speed at which she strode off in search of a cigarette, you'd believe her.

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Investments, by the way, don't have to be costly. One of the recession's positive developments is the emergence of affordable labels, whether it's Raoul, the new midlevel darling of the fashion press, or something cheaper. The high street may have some way to go on pants (though Zara does great shapes that don't bag), but it's always worth a trawl for summer dresses, playful knits, and jersey tops. When Victoria Beckham starts stocking up on Gap's cashmere sweaters and tells you, "It's all about mixing high-low," you know the brand is doing something right. That something could be clothes for everyday life.

"I got so bored with designers just toying with fantasy," said Tom Ford backstage after his debut womenswear show. Elation is the best way to describe the reaction to his new vision: grown-up pantsuits, trench coats, and '70s-style pleated-skirt dresses modeled by Lauren Hutton, Marisa Berenson, and Rita Wilson--superstars but unapologetically real adult women.

In the end, spring may be about bridging the gap between runway and reality, about addressing emotions rather than beating the incessant drum for must-haves. "When I go shopping now," actress Marion Cotillard told me, "I'm not looking necessarily for something specific or even to look stylish or chic. I just want something that's me."

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